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there was lots of it. Not all the Allies would go on to work in the nonprofit or
public sectors and not everyone would manage to overcome the hurdles of
coming from a less privileged background, but I’ve been amazed over time to see
how many of our recruits did, in fact, succeed and commit themselves long term
to serving a larger public good. Some became Public Allies staff themselves; some
are now even leaders in government agencies and inside national nonprofit
organizations. Twenty-five years after its inception, Public Allies is still going
strong, with chapters in Chicago and two dozen other cities and thousands of
alumni around the country. To know that I played some small part in that,
helping to create something that’s endured, is one of the most gratifying feelings
I’ve had in my professional life.

I tended to Public Allies with the half-exhausted pride of a new parent. I
went to sleep each night thinking about what still needed to be done and opened
my eyes every morning with my mental checklists for the day, the week, and the
month ahead already made. After graduating our first class of twenty-seven Allies
in the spring, we welcomed a new set of forty in the fall and continued to grow
from there. In hindsight, I think of it as the best job I ever had, for how
wonderfully on the edge I felt while I was doing it and for how even a small
victory—whether it was finding a good placement for a native Spanish speaker or
sorting through someone’s fears about working in an unfamiliar neighborhood—
had to be thoroughly earned.

For the first time in my life, really, I felt I was doing something immediately
meaningful, directly impacting the lives of others while also staying connected to
both my city and my culture. It gave me a better understanding, too, of how
Barack had felt when he’d worked as an organizer or on Project VOTE!, caught
up in the all-consuming primacy of an uphill battle—the only kind of battle
Barack loved, the kind he would always love—knowing how it can drain you
while at the same time giving you everything you’ll ever need.

hile I was focused on Public Allies, Barack had settled into what was—by
his standard, anyway—a period of relative tameness and predictability. He was
teaching a class on racism and the law at the University of Chicago Law School
and working by day at his law firm, mostly on cases involving voting rights and
employment discrimination. He still sometimes ran community-organizing
workshops as well, leading a couple of Friday sessions with my cohort at Public